pop music
Lady Gaga, The Mayhem Ball, O2 review - epic, eye-boggling and full of spiritWednesday, 01 October 2025
The backscreens pop alive. A wall of photographer’s flashguns. On cyberpunk crutches, Lady Gaga stumbles jerkily towards us. She sings her 2009 global smash “Paparazzi”, her arms clad in armour, on her head a metallic skullcap. Her corseted dress... Read more... |
Odd times and clunking lines in 'The Life of a Showgirl' for Taylor SwiftSaturday, 04 October 2025
It’s funny: people say a lot online that what you’re allowed to like and dislike in music is bounded by age, gender and so forth. “It’s not FOR you,” they say. And in many ways, when it comes to Taylor Swift, that’s fair enough.There are certainly... Read more... |
Justin Lewis: Into the Groove review - fun and fact-filled trip through Eighties popThursday, 02 October 2025
Into the Groove is Justin Lewis’s follow-up to 2023’s Don’t Stop the Music, in which he traced 40 years of pop history by offering bite-sized facts for every day from January 1st to December 31st, jumping randomly from year to year. I noted in my... Read more... |
Get Down Tonight, Charing Cross Theatre review - glitz and hits from the 70sWednesday, 01 October 2025
In a fair few bars around the world tonight, bands will be playing “That’s The Way (I Like It)”, “Give It Up” and so many more of KC and the Sunshine Band’s bangers. They’ve filled dancefloors for half a century and Harry Wayne Casey (KC to you and... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: The Peanut Butter Conspiracy - The Most Up Till NowSunday, 28 September 2025
“It's a Happening Thing,” January 1967’s debut single from California’s Peanut Butter Conspiracy, is one of the year’s best. Driving, with a full sound, a psychedelic edge, soaring vocal and immediate tune, it sounds like a hit.However, despite... Read more... |
Doja Cat's 'Vie' starts well but soon tails offSaturday, 27 September 2025
Doja Cat is a fascinating one-off. She’s a rap-centric Californian artist whose background dips into everything from new age philosophy to skate culture. She’s the epitome of a 2020s singer who’s as much a social media phenomenon as a pop star (and... Read more... |
Mariah Carey is still 'Here for It All' after an eight-year breakFriday, 26 September 2025
One of the great moments of Private Eye magazine’s fustiness in recent years was putting Mariah Carey in Pseud’s Corner, for the quote about how she deals with the ageing process: “I do not acknowledge time.” That quip is of course in no way pseudo-... Read more... |
First Person: Musician ALA.NI on how thoughts of empire and reparation influenced a songThursday, 18 September 2025
I’ve never thought of myself as a political artist. I write about love. The tender bits, the messy bits, the heartbreak that rearranges a life. That’s where songwriting usually finds me. “TIEF”, from my forthcoming album Sunshine Music, arrived... Read more... |
Album: NewDad - AltarThursday, 18 September 2025
With their second album Altar, the Irish combo NewDad has moved from the love-embittered shoegaze of their 2023 debut Madra toward a worldlier perspective married to a comparatively sophisticated but confrontational style. Some reviewers have... Read more... |
Album: The Divine Comedy - Rainy Sunday AfternoonWednesday, 17 September 2025
Neil Hannon has been recording and touring as the Divine Comedy since 1989 and has tried a fair few flavours along the way, from chamber pop to Britpop, while sounding fundamentally himself throughout. Rainy Sunday Afternoon, however, sounds like a... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Robyn - Robyn 20th-Anniversary EditionSunday, 14 September 2025
Sometimes, record labels don’t like what those on their roster have recorded. Such was the case with BMG Sweden and Robin Carlsson who, as Robyn, had made three albums with varying success and a raft of home-country hit singles for the label from... Read more... |
Album: Ed Sheeran - PlaySaturday, 13 September 2025
“It’s a long way up from rock bottom/There’s been times I felt I could fall further.” So runs the opening line of Ed Sheeran’s eighth studio album. It’s delivered with the quavering falsetto-voice-breaking that’s become default for sung emotion.... Read more... |
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